Jens Franke (Germany)

Jens Franke combines street photography with portraiture to capture images that are both intimate and mysterious. He is a professional designer and photographer from Stuttgart. His passion for photography started during his exchange semester in Rio de Janeiro. He was so impressed about the versatility and tensions between the different population groups living together in one mega city.
To share his impressions he started a blog where he posted his personal view on the city. Back in Germany, his aroused wanderlust took him to exciting destinations in Columbia, Morocco, Europe and the US.
Capturing fleeting emotional moments of people, whether of happiness, sadness, joy, anxiety or loneliness became his goal of each journey.

TESTIMONIAL

With all the possible exotic places in mind, and having grown up in the Bavarian Alps, I thought Stuttgart (Germany) would be quite a boring place to live when I was here for the first months. To keep myself entertained I started to watch out for the subtle adventures of every day life. My camera got the main pretense for my everyday strolls through the little neighborhoods here. It worked out for me! I sensitised my view and step by step I got used to the rhythm of the city.
While I started photographing the people in the streets of Stuttgart, I got more and more interested in individual portraiture and the story behind the people. In my last Exhibition “Little Districts”, I combined street photography and portraiture to enable my visitors to see my city from both an intimate and a mysterious perspective at the same time.
I really like the unobtrusiveness of the FUJIFILM X System. With my blacktaped X-E1 I got barely noticed on the street and my whole equipment fits in a small camera bag. Since Street Photography is often a matter of performance I also like the intuitive controls and the customizable function keys. I made my X-E1 behaving like the Contax G2 which handling i loved. I set the focus via thumb and set the lightning via pressing the shutter halfway down. For a better handling i use the additional and pretty ergonomically handgrip.